The present invention is directed to a contact pin for insertion into contacting engagement with a through-opening in a printed circuit board. A deformed elastic section of the pin affords the contact between the pin and the opening in the board.
Insertable elastic pins of the type mentioned above have the basic task of compensating for manufacturing tolerances in the diameter of the metallic surfaced through-openings in printed board circuit; they have been known for some time, for example, from DE-OS 26 56 736 in the form so that over a certain partial section of the post or pin length they have an approximately C-shaped cross-section, which, initially, permits a diameter variation or diameter adaptation to different hole diameters in the printed boards and secondly, by a snug fit in the board opening also affords the required contact pressure. Now while the task of the diameter adaptation may be considered more or less well resolved in this known design, the integrity of the contact itself is very insufficient; this is attributable to the fact that the specific contact pressure of the C-shaped section of the post with the hole wall is very low due to the relatively large contact area, so that a so-called hermetic union can never result, but instead one must reckon with corrosion phenomena at the contact locations.